Winning?

In all the excitement of the county fair entry here I forgot to post the results.

I entered three images and my son Jarren entered one. I entered in three different categories, visual manipulation, portraits and photojournalism.  My son walked away with a first place in the junior photojournalism category for his awesome shot of a F/A 18 breaking the sound barrier. Its a truly awesome shot. He really did a  fantastic job of capturing the moment.  This shot was right on exposure wise, he asked me to sharpen a bit for printing but otherwise it was as shot.

This HDR shot of Moab Utah was my first place winner, I entered it in the visual manipulation category. Here is the original image taken during the golden hour and badly overexposed.  I used this shot in camera raw and made three separate exposures then combined in photomatix.  I printed the final image on Metallic paper to bring out the highlights in the rocks. It amazing that the HDR process can take a blah shot and make it a winner shot.